When my mother graduated from Talladega College (Talladega, Alabama) in 1959, her baccalaureate speaker was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He’s pictured with Talladega’s president, Dr. Arthur D. Gray (r.), and Dean of Student Affairs, Dr. Cohen T. Simpson. Dr. Gray was the college’s first black president.
Talladega’s commencement speaker that spring was Shirley Chisholm.
Photo courtesy Talladega College (via family collection)
A mother escorts her two daughters to Orchid Villa Elementary School in Miami, 1959.
Four black children were admitted to Orchid Villa Elementary School in the fall of 1959. I believe the two girls in this photo are Jan and Irene Glover, ages 9 and 7. Their mother, Irvena Primus, was a Congress of Racial Equality member.
While I think the photo is beautiful and very Obama-esque, this was a failed attempt at integration. Miami was a heavily segregated city. Many white parents chose to transfer their children to other schools rather than attend the same school as four black children. Two months later, the school board voted to transfer nearly 380 black students to the school and replace the existing white personnel with black teachers and administrators. By the end of the year, only one white student remained. The next year, the school was entirely black.
Black schools were notoriously underfunded and overcrowded so the closest thing to a victory in the integration of Orchid Villa Elementary is that it created an additional school for black students. It is also an example of the structural power of pro-segregation officials. There were white parents who were willing to send their children to an integrated school in the beginning, but the transfer of students and personnel was designed to encourage those parents to enroll their children in white schools.
Miami schools were not fully integrated until 1969.
New York City Mayor Robert Wagner greeting the teenagers who integrated Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1958
Pictured, front row, left to right: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Carlotta Walls, Mayor Wagner, Thelma Mothershed, Gloria Ray; back row, left to right: Terrance Roberts, Ernest Green, Melba Pattilo, Jefferson Thomas.
Walter Albertin, photographer
New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress
Carver Negro School chorus singing at the 1957 Florida Folk Festival - White Springs, Florida
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/74558, Department of Commerce Collection
© Terry Cryer, undated, George Lewis & Joe Watkins at Colye club
Terry Cryer has a way with a camera like no-one else; timeless, intuitive, effortless, iconic and alluring. His images and unique printing techniques tell stories that words could never define. Cryer’s stunning portraits of the great jazz and blues musicians of the 1950s capture the essence of the time and create a compelling insight into the key figures in this revolutionary movement. (read more)
There’s something almost transcendent about this photo.
(Source: burnedshoes)
